May Day In Vermont-Put People and The Planet First!

On May Day, 2012, march as a Popular Front in Montpelier, Vermont in support of:
*Healthcare as a Human Right!
*The Right To Safe Local Farm Food!
*Justice For Migrant Farm Workers!
*The Right For Vermont Workers To Organize!
*The Right of Vermont's Daycare Providers To Organize!
*The Right To A Livable Wage!
*Save Our Post Offices!
*Abenaki/Native American Tribal Forests!
*Town Forests!
*Environmental Justice!
*Renewable Energy Now!
*Justice For Those Impacted By Hurricane Irene!
*Freedon and Unity!
*A People's Democray!

On Tuesday, May 1 come to Montpelier, Vermont and march with the VT Sierra Club in support of environmental Justice, town and Abenaki tribal forests, green renewable energy, and against climate change! The Sierra Club will be joining thirty other peoples' organizations, including the Vermont Workers Center, 350 .org, Rural Vermont, the VSEA, AFL-CIO, AFT, UE, the Vermont Progressive Party, The ISO,the Red Clover Collective, the IWW, and Occupy Vermont in solidarity for the Put People and the Planet First rally!

Rain or Shine. We aim to make this the largest and most powerful demonstration in the long history of Vermont's Capital City!

What: Put People and the Planet First!

When: May 1, 11:30am (march starts at 12 noon--look for the Sierra Club banner!)

Where: Montpelier City Hall, Main Street (marching to Statehouse)

Why: Because Vermont Strong = Put People and the Planet First!

The rally will seek to create a popular front of grassroots causes and organizations. In addition to environmental issues, we will be marching to support:

*Healthcare as a Human Right!
*The Right To Safe Local Farm Food!
*The Right For Vermont Workers To Organize!
*The Right of Vermont's Daycare Providers To Organize!
*The Right To A Livable Wage!
*Save Our Post Offices!
*Justice For Migrant Farm Workers!
*Justice For Those Impacted By Hurricane Irene!
*A People's Democray!
*And More!

With your support and direct participation, we will build a movement of movements that will make Vermont the best place in the world for the environment and for working families! We are the 99% and we are winning!

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The EZLN has announced the end of the Red Alert due to the end of the consulta and the announcement of the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona. This set of communiques includes the re-opening of the Caracoles and details of the "Sixth Committee" which is to meet with people or organizations who do not participate in elections to form 'the other campaign'. Meetings will then be held in Chiapas of various sectors with the aim of issuing a common statement agreed by all on September 16.

Editoral statement of new Candian publication called 'Upping the Anti' published by the Autonomy & Solidarity website which "is an on-line network for anti-capitalists who believe that revolutionary transformation will come from workers and oppressed people self-organizing from below and not from the top down organizing of any state, party or union bureaucracy"

As we engage in larger social movements, it can be easy to lose sight of our endgame and essentially function as a type of "social democrat." Here are some key reasons and methods for avoiding this, as well as countering the progressive election logic during voting season.

Campaigns teach by more than what is in their written programs. Even if the campaign was more explicitly radical, functionally it is teaching people that social change comes about through electing better politicians. The campaign has all the features of a mainstream election effort – adoration of a single personality, exaggeration of his “leadership”, meaningless pledges to “get results for you”. This is an elitist approach that reinforces the passivity of people by making someone else the “leader” who gets things done, instead of arguing for all of us to take control over our own lives. The activists and community members who have dived into the Ty Moore campaign are not prioritizing organizing one-on-ones to plan direct actions at work, at school, or in their neighborhoods, or discussing and debating how to replace the racist police with community militias or how narrow gender-roles stifle our humanity or how to build rank & file power against the union bureaucracy. They are rallying around “our guy” and training people to fundraise and to get out the vote. This is the main lesson that participants in the campaign are gaining: How to participate in this unjust system.

This is a piece we’re sharing originally posted to Machete 408 by Adam Weaver. It is a review/summation piece is being released in conjunction with a forthcoming piece by Scott Nappolas which presents an extensive discussion of Lenin’s concept of democratic centralism.

The terrain is changing beneath our feet. Since the collapse of the majority of the “official communist” regimes, the world has witnessed both events and ideas that have undermined the former dominant thinking within the left. The Zapatistas, Argentina in 2001, South Korean workers movements, Oaxaca in 2006, the struggles around anti-globalization, and Greece’s series of insurrectionary moments have increasingly presented challenges to traditional left answers to movements and organization. In previous eras Marxist-Leninism was the nexus which all currents by default had to respond to either in agreement or critique. Today, increasingly anarchist practices and theory have come to play this role.

As a member of an anarchist political organization, a friend once told me I in fact was practicing democratic centralism. This was perplexing, because the group had no resembling structures, practices, or the associated behaviors of democratic centralism. However, I was told that since we debated, came to common decisions, and acted on that collective democracy, we were in fact democratic centralist. This kind of productive confusion led to questions about the concept, and why the target of democratic centralism has shifted. This move, the shifting conceptual territory of core concepts of a certain orthodoxy, comes up repeatedly not only with democratic centralism, but also surrounding ideas like crisis, dialectics, the State, and class. The resulting cognitive dissonance caused me to investigate attempts at reinvigorating the concept of democratic centralism (democratic centralist revisionism), and understand truly what it is, where it came from, and how it has been practiced.

The EZLN has announced the end of the Red Alert due to the end of the consulta and the announcement of the Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandona. This set of communiques includes the re-opening of the Caracoles and details of the "Sixth Committee" which is to meet with people or organizations who do not participate in elections to form 'the other campaign'. Meetings will then be held in Chiapas of various sectors with the aim of issuing a common statement agreed by all on September 16.

Editoral statement of new Candian publication called 'Upping the Anti' published by the Autonomy & Solidarity website which "is an on-line network for anti-capitalists who believe that revolutionary transformation will come from workers and oppressed people self-organizing from below and not from the top down organizing of any state, party or union bureaucracy"